Move the Stars (Something in the Way 3)

He held me there a moment, searching my eyes, and then he took my elbow and pushed me into the cab. Without another word, he closed the door behind me and paid the driver through the passenger side window. “Avenue B and Houston,” he said and hit the roof.

My heart ached for him. My insides clenched for him. I was ready to be consumed, to sign over my life to him, to hurt anyone who came between us—and I understood then why he’d shoved me in the cab. Why he’d held back all these years, denied me, hurt me, pushed me away. Once we jumped off this cliff, there was no coming back for either of us. We might fly, we might hit the ground, but once it was done, things could never go back to what they were for anyone involved. I fought every urge, every instinct to call for him, to ask him to come with me.

He’d said it was too late for him—I feared it was too late for me, too.

6

Lake

Alone in my apartment, my Calvin Klein gown draped over the back of my desk chair, heels discarded at the door and makeup washed away, I tossed and turned in the dark. I wanted Manning there, caging me against the mattress the way he had the cab. I needed him to make up for all the years we hadn’t been kissing the way we had hours ago.

I kicked off the bedspread and stared at the ceiling, restless, aching, lost. He’d sliced open a wound long bandaged, scarred though not healed, and now it wouldn’t stop bleeding.

Midnight became two in the morning, then four. I drifted in and out of sleep. I could have Manning, but he’d come at a price. Was I willing to pay? Corbin wouldn’t understand, and maybe Val wouldn’t either. My parents would never forgive me. Tiffany would be devastated. But after years of drifting apart from all of them, would severing those relationships hurt more than saying goodbye to Manning?

I forced myself to remember my sister, the good, the bad, and everything in between. The time, after she’d hit puberty, she’d pushed me out of her room while her friends were over, and I’d almost fallen down the stairs. The summer we were nine and twelve, and she’d carried me half a mile on her back because I’d sprained my ankle during handball. All the nights I’d sat across from her at the dinner table and shared an inside joke or called her annoying or let her use me as a scapegoat for whatever trouble she’d gotten into that week. The nights I’d lounged in her bed and watched in the mirror as she’d attempted bigger lips with the aid of liner or modeled clothing out of shopping bags, tags springing off her as she walked a makeshift runway.

I tortured myself with the memories but the instant that afternoon she’d sauntered up to Manning at the construction site came to mind, I lost my heart to my stomach. She’d swiped him right out from under me, and he’d let her. She’d already gotten more of him than she deserved. I could acknowledge the terrible thing I was doing to her, and how painfully I loved him, but I couldn’t think of them together so I didn’t.

A garbage truck growled and beeped down my street, stirring the peaceful night into a new day.

Regardless of the fact that I’d seen and wanted and loved him first, he legally belonged to her. She’d kissed and touched and made love to him first, but he actually belonged to me.

I didn’t choose her, he’d told me. He hadn’t chosen me, though. Could I get over that?

Give me a chance to erase both of them for us. Would he ever be able to?

I wasn’t sure, but what also echoed in my mind was what he’d said right before he’d finally put his lips on mine. In case this is the last chance I get . . .

The last chance. The end of us. Did I say goodbye to him for good? Or had my fate always been to get everything I wanted, just not the way I’d planned?

The excruciating idea that I might send him back to Tiffany, that I’d give her more of the time and love that belonged to me, was too much to handle. Unequivocally, without question or condition, I loved Manning and he was mine, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.

I sat up in bed, the room a dreamy white-blue with early dawn. Wrapping the top sheet around myself, I clutched it to my chest and went to the living room to dial 411. There were people I should’ve called first. Tiffany, to confess everything. Corbin, to prepare him for the blow. Val, to get her to stop me. Instead, I asked for the W in Union Square. When the front desk connected me to Manning Sutter, the line rang and rang until I eventually had to face the fact that he wasn’t there at six in the morning.